Harmonizing Differences - Teaching Acceptance in the Music Room

Speaker 1 (00:00):

Have you heard about my new free masterclass? It's called Seven Secrets to Engaging Students With Special Challenges. And in this masterclass, I am gonna give you my favorite secrets for how I teach my students who are uniquely made and who have special learning challenges. Wanna learn more? All you have to do is go to stories that sing.net/free masterclass to sign up. It's happening March the 11th at nine 30 Central, 10 30 Eastern. Again, that is stories that sing.net/free masterclass. Siga,

Speaker 2 (00:44):

There's a happy music teacher.

Speaker 1 (00:51):

Are you an elementary music teacher who's frustrated and overwhelmed? I'm Jeanette Shori, a happy music teacher who loves teaching every day. But it wasn't long ago, I was in your shoes. Join me Wednesdays to help you find happy in your music classroom.

(01:11)

Our children's greatest desire is to be loved and accepted by their peers, by the adults in their lives, by everyone who is a part of their lives. So let me ask you, as educators, how can we help make that happen for our students? I was on the bus and I was coming from Pittsburgh. I had been in Florida for about a year, but I was kind of really new to the culture there, and I was very backwards and I was very just naive. And the girls there were into boys and I wasn't into boys and it was just not a good fit for me. So I'm on the bus and I am looking around and it's crowded and it's noisy, and it was a beautiful sunny day. And all of a sudden I hear the bus driver go, oh no. And she stops and the bus has broken down.

(02:19)

This was, yes, this is how old I am pre-cellphone. So there was no way to get in touch with parents to get in touch with the school. She was like, does anybody live close by that would be willing to go home and tell their parents that the bus is broken down so that they can call the school? And I didn't think twice about it. I just was like, oh yeah, I'm right here. And I literally walked the two minute walk down and I told my mom that the bus was broken down and she called. And as I'm getting off the bus, the entire bus is booing me. And I to honestly never thought twice about it. I got on the bus the next day, and as I was getting on, I don't know how they did it, but they had planned that they all had some sort of sticky note that they had just had paper and tape, and they had put things like hit me, punch me, kick me, things like that.

(03:22)

So as I was getting off the bus, you know, people kind of like tapped my back and I literally thought nothing of it. I was so naive, and as I was getting off the bus, people hit me and kicked me. And the bus driver, I don't remember the bus driver doing anything about it. That one incident led to the neighborhood girls bullying me and and truly bullying me. I was chased down the hall. Girls threatened to beat me up. I mean, it was very, very bad. I went from being a very confident person to someone who looked over their shoulder all the time. I walked around with my shoulder, shoulders slouched. I, I just, I, it really changed me and it changed every aspect of my life. Now, there is a tie-in here, and this is what I want to tell you. Most of the awful in our world happens because someone is different.

(04:24)

Someone else is afraid of their difference, doesn't understand their difference, or just plain doesn't like the person because they're different. And that was what I was, I was different. I was backwards, I was naive, I was super tiny and I couldn't wear the cool clothes that the girls were wearing. And I just, I just was weird. You know, that is something that happens to a lot of our students. So while it's not part of our job description as music teachers, we have a unique opportunity as the teacher of every child to teach our children how to be more accepting not only of each other, but of different types of music and different ways of eating and different cultures and different socioeconomics, and people whose minds don't work the same way that yours do. People whose bodies look or act or work differently from our own people who live differently.

(05:32)

So we have this unique opportunity. If music is the universal language, then why not use music to teach everyone about other cultures, other ways of life, other languages, other people, uh, how to be accepting of each other's differences. Why not use music to teach our students that while brains and bodies look different and act different, no matter how different someone is on the outside, they're the same kind of person with the same exact parts and the same kinds of feelings on the inside. Now, you may be asking yourself, who am I to be teaching acceptance? Well, you are the person who's in the classroom every day with the students in your school. You are the person who watches tiny little ones accept each other as they are. You are the one who watches children play with whoever they want to play with until someone tells them not to.

(06:36)

You're also the person who watches children who are different, be laughed at and poked fun at, who watches how sad they are because they're not accepted among their peers. You watch as no one chooses them to be their partner. You see the other students laughing behind their backs at students who just don't fit in and it breaks your heart. You have the power to change that. You have more power than you know. I was teaching my principal's son for two years and she came up to me after he had been my student for about three weeks. And she said, oh my gosh, all I hear is Ms. Shorey, Ms. Schey says this, and Ms. Shorey does this. And Ms. Shorey says that, and we can't do it this way because Ms. Shorey says we have to do it that way. That is what happens in your students' homes if you are loved and respected by your students.

(07:35)

And I know if you're listening to this podcast that you are, then you have power. You have the power to help your students be more accepting of each other and therefore, go with me here. You have the power to change the world. You have the power to change lives. Now, one of the things that I like to do when I'm teaching my students about acceptance is to model it in my classroom. That is the first thing that I do. I think it's important to learn students' names, not only to learn their names, but to practice pronouncing their names the right way. Because if you are not pronouncing their names correctly, then it doesn't look like you care about them, even if you do. So, I model acceptance, and I know you do too, by treating all of my students the same way, no matter where they come from or what they look like or what differences they have.

(08:41)

I model treating my students with acceptance by learning their names, by pronouncing their names correctly, by asking them questions about their heritage. If I know for a that they come from another country. And I do have some students that come from another country. In fact, the other day I was teaching a song from Brazil and I asked two of my students who are in one of my ESL classes about the song, and they were like, yes, we know it. And they were so excited about it and they were excited to hear Portuguese and they, they just were really happy about it. And the other students were excited to hear their perspective. And those are the ways that you can model teaching your students to be accepting just by being accepting yourself. The other way that I want to talk to you about today about teaching acceptance is of course, me as the stories sing lady, um, using storybooks to teach acceptance.

(09:46)

So I love to explore diversity with picture books. I love to explore non-traditional gender roles. I love to explore new names, how names are different, how you can pronounce them differently. I love to explore how people are uniquely built. And this is a really great way to say students who have physical characteristics that are not like the other students. We call those students uniquely built. I like to explore storybooks about different cultures. So I have some storybooks that are gonna be coming out in my new stories that sing two resource book, hopefully by the end of next month. I will keep you posted on that. But we are almost done with the editing process and these storybooks are all in this resource book. Um, and I just want to touch on them for you. So first of all, let's talk about exploring diversity and exploring non-traditional gender roles.

(10:52)

So I like the story Drum Dream Girl, and it's a story of a little girl who grew up in Cuba in the fifties and she wanted to play the drums and she was not allowed to play the drums. Her dad said that the drums were never played by girls. They were only played by boys. And the pictures in this story are mind-blowingly beautiful. They're they're rich and vibrant and colorful and just, they're, they're just amazing beautiful images. And that's something really important when you're choosing story books. So one of the things I like to do is after I've read this story, then I like to ask my students something like, what do you notice about the little girl in the story? And I might say, what is different about girls today in our country and what is the same about girls in country? Because I had a discussion with some fifth graders last year about just the, um, non-traditional gender roles that they, things that they weren't allowed to do in school and they weren't allowed to play football in the same way that the boys were.

(12:12)

And there were a couple of other examples like that. They were talking about pe and they were talking about things that they were and weren't allowed to do as girls. So I thought fifth graders had this was having a major effect on them. Um, then I like to, I've created a tiny melody, um, because there is a repeating pattern in this book, drum Dream Girl Dream. And I created a tiny melody to go with that. And that's a pretty easy thing to do. You just decide on a melody that you like or maybe do some experimenting with your orphan instruments or with your piano or your guitar, whatever your instrument is. And you can come up with a tiny melody on your own. Then this is a great book for exploring different tams on tub bono drums or Congo drums or even hand drums, or if you have bucket drums, you can do that.

(13:11)

And what I like to do first is before we explore, I like to give my students plenty of opportunity to explore the instruments either on their own. If you're teaching bigger kids, this, this book is great for second, third, fourth, fifth grade, even sixth grade. So we'll take some time to either, if I'm teaching littler ones, my younger ones say second and third graders, I'm gonna do, we're gonna do some echoing. We're gonna explore different ways to play the drums. If I'm teaching my fourth fifth graders or if you have sixth graders, you can have them explore and then turn and talk to a neighbor or demonstrate to you what, depending on, uh, how comfortable they are with, with sharing, um, demonstrate to you, uh, the different tams that they've come up with. So that is a really great opportunity to explore tams on your drums.

(14:08)

It's also a great opportunity to improvise because what I do in the second read aloud is I will have them improvise using different tams. So for example, on one page, the author talks about the drum dream girl had to keep dreaming quiet secret drumbeat dreams. So I asked my students what would quiet secret drumbeat dreams sound like? And we might do a picture walk through the story. And that means you just turn the page and you take a look at some of the sound words like quiet secret drumbeat dreams, and you read those and you have your students experiment with some tams before you read the story aloud a second time. So those are some great ways to use that storybook. The next storybook is called Your Name is a song. And the little girl in the story is, I'm gonna guess she's in kindergarten.

(15:07)

And she's really frustrated because her teacher and the other students in her class can't pronounce her name. And so her mom shows her how to teach people to sing her name. And she's like, I can't do that. Names aren't songs. And so then her mom demonstrates all these different names. Now I am gonna tell you that the author of this book goes through the story and teaches you how to pronounce all those names. And I will put a link to that in the show notes for you. Um, but so then you can, once you've read the book aloud, you can have a short discussion about how important names are and the struggle of having a name that's different. And you can have your students talk about that a little bit. Does anyone have a name that people, or maybe you have them give a thumbs up or a thumbs down.

(16:00)

Give me a thumbs up if someone has mispronounced your name. And then you can talk about that a little bit. So we read the story again with the tiny melody, and if you don't have time to read it first, then you may wanna teach the tiny melody first and then do the read aloud and have them sing the tiny melody at every time it occurs in the story. And this is a great one to get into some group discussion, to get into some group work where you can have the students create name poems or they can teach each other how to sing their names. And then, um, you can do some really fun activities with that. The next book I'm gonna tell you about today is all about people who are uniquely built. And this is called The Adventures of Corey. Will You Be My friend?

(16:56)

And during a trip to the playground, Corey befriends children who are uniquely built and the author of this story is also uniquely built and her daughter's name is Corey. And she felt this strong need to write a story about how children react to students who look and act differently. And we find that a lot in our classrooms that students who look different or have physical challenges or perhaps they just come off as a little bit different in another child's eyes because their brain works differently than your typical student. This is a great storybook to teach your students that just because someone is uniquely made does not mean that they are so different from you. So when students react differently to someone who is uniquely made, that's really hard. I mean, you know yourself, I'm sure that you have had circumstances like that. So this is a great book to read aloud and then talk about the differences in the children.

(18:11)

And so you get introduced to each of the children and the challenges that they face, and then they talk about how they don't have any friends or that people point and laugh at them. And I love to talk to my students about how that would make them feel if someone pointed and laughed. And we do a lot of emotion in this storybook. So I've got my orff instrument set up in sea pentatonic and a minor pentatonic. And we go into a discussion where I show them, um, emojis and we do a sort, okay, boys and girls, if someone is pointing and laughing at you, which emoji are we going to use? Are we going to use the sad emoji or we gonna use the happy emoji? And we put that point and laugh under, I've got flashcards made and we put point and laugh under the sad emoji.

(19:07)

Of course, what happens if someone is your friend? So we have that flashcard and that flash guard's gonna go under the happy part. Then we talk about the difference between major or minor. And if I'm with little ones, this book is really good for say kindergarten through maybe second or third grade. And if I'm with my we little ones, we're gonna talk about happy music versus sad music. And I'm gonna play a little bit from each one, each one of the orff instruments. And then we're gonna talk about the differences between the types of music and how music can make you feel a certain way. And then we're gonna go through the book again and I'll hold up the happy face because that's really the best way to do this. And the students who are playing the instruments that are in a major key are gonna do some improvising. And then I'll hold up the sad face for the parts that are, um, that are sad or make people, um, feel bad. And those students will play in the minor key. So those are three storybooks that teach acceptance, and they are such an amazing way to just explore the differences between people and to teach your students a little bit about being more accepting of each other.

Speaker 3 (20:32):

Well, that's all I have for you today, but before I go, let me remind you, keep learning, keep growing and keep being fabulous. You.